Pinot CountryWords (14)

American Viticultural Area

American Viticultural Area: a boundary drawn around ground with a name, established by federal rule in 27 CFR part 9. It says where the grapes grew and nothing at all about how good they were.

Brettanomyces

Brettanomyces, a yeast that lives in old barrels and makes phenols people describe as barnyard, plaster or clove.

Sugar in the juice, as a percentage by weight. Pickers read it off a refractometer in the row, and it is the number most arguments about picking dates are conducted in — usually alongside acid and pH, which matter as…

In Burgundy, a named parcel of vineyard with a boundary, a history and a reputation — not a weather word. There are over a thousand of them on the Côte d'Or, and UNESCO listed the lot in 2015.

A growth: a vineyard, or a class of vineyards, recognised for what it yields. Grand cru and premier cru rank the ground in Burgundy; in Bordeaux the same word ranks the château instead.

A named place on the cadastral map — the official French term for a piece of ground people call something. Every climat is a lieu-dit; not every lieu-dit carries a cru rank.

A named vineyard held whole by one owner. Rare in Burgundy, where inheritance splits everything, and printed on the label whenever it is true.

A merchant who buys grapes, juice or finished wine, raises it in their own cellar and sells it under their own name. Half of Burgundy's output moves this way.

Punching the cap down into the wine. The old tool is a plunger; the old method is bare legs.

The bleed. Juice drawn off a red fermenter to concentrate what stays, and sold as rosé.

Blauburgunder, Blauer Spätburgunder

German for pinot noir, and a name that carries an argument: 'late Burgundian', against the früh — early — one that ripens weeks sooner.

The claim that a wine tastes of where it grew — soil, slope, aspect, weather, and the habits of the people farming it. In France it is also a legal argument, because appellations are drawn on it.

Whole harvest: the bunches go in as they came off the vine, stems and all.

A grower who makes the wine. Not a winemaker who buys fruit and not a farmer who sells it — the word insists on both halves of the job.